The Shimmer (10 page)

The wooden planks of the wall couldn't protect him from an AK-47's high-powered bullet, but at least they concealed him as he crouched beneath the shooter's eye level and peered around the corner.

The faint light from the opposite side of the observation platform showed him a nightmare. Bodies lay all around. Some twitched, but most remained still.

The shooter stalked among them.

"Came from hell!" He fired down at a head, his rifle's muzzle flash casting him in a grotesque silhouette. "Going back to hell!"

Where's Costigan? Page wondered frantically.

He inhaled sharply when he saw the police chief 's body sprawled on the ground halfway between the observation platform and the crowd. Costigan's pistol lay near his outstretched right hand.

The gunman fired at a twitching body, the muzzle flash revealing a spray of blood. He dropped an empty magazine and inserted a fresh one so quickly that Page didn't have the chance even to think about charging across the parking lot and tackling him.

The man aimed down, about to shoot at another squirming body, but suddenly stopped and lowered the rifle. He turned as if something had caught his attention. Page followed the direction of his gaze.

What the shooter looked at was conspicuous, even in the dark. It was white, so big that it couldn't be ignored. Inside it, people whimpered and wailed.

The tour bus.

My God, Page realized, before he started shooting, some of the passengers went back to their seats.

The gunman walked toward it. With his back to Page, he faced the dark windows of the bus. He stood straighter, as if energized, and took long steps over bodies, approaching his new target. As he rounded the front, disappearing toward the door, Page was tempted to hurry from the side of the observation platform, wanting desperately to reach Costigan's pistol. But the sound of his footsteps on the gravel would almost certainly attract attention. There was little chance that he could reach the pistol before the gunman heard him coming and reappeared, shooting.

A fist banged against the opposite side of the bus.

"Open the door!" the gunman demanded.

Page backed along the sidewall of the observation platform and headed toward the dark road.

"Open the damned door!"

Page got to the road and hurried along it, his sneakers hushed on the pavement.

Shots clanged through metal. The gunman was firing into the side of the bus. The AK-47's bullets were capable of penetrating the metal, passing straight through, and going out the other side. A human body would barely slow them.

After the next shot into the side of the bus, someone screamed.

Page reduced speed as he came along the road and neared the back of the bus.

The next shot was followed by a cry of pain. Bullets shattered windows. The sound of terrified wailing intensified.

Page was troubled by another sound he began to hear: that of liquid spilling onto the gravel.

"Came from hell!" the man screamed.

The smell of gasoline drifted into Page's nostrils.

"Going back there!"

Page's training had taught him that only in the movies did a shot to a vehicle's fuel tank cause a fire, let alone an explosion. This guy could shoot at the bus's fuel tank all night, but unless he had incendiary ammunition, the only effect would be a lot of holes.

And more leaking fuel. The gasoline fumes smelled stronger.

He moved warily, hoping the darkness behind him would conceal his outline. Peering around the back of the bus, he saw the gunman, who was so intent on shooting at the gas tank that he didn't notice anything else. He stepped back from a pool of gasoline that was spreading on the gravel.

Oh, God--surely he isn't . . .

The man set down his rifle and pulled a book of matches from a shirt pocket.

Page charged.

The man tore a match from the book and struck it along the abrasive strip. The match flared.

Then he heard Page coming and turned. The light from the match cast shadows up his face, exaggerating its harsh angles. His eyes reflected the flame, emphasizing their intensity.

He lit the entire book.

Page ran faster, yelling obscenities as fiercely as he could, trying to startle the man, to distract him from what he intended to do.

The shooter dropped the burning matches an instant before Page crashed into him. As they hit the gravel, Page could only pray that they would go out, but instantly he heard a whoosh behind him.

Flames dispelled the darkness. Heat rushed over his back.

Outraged, he slammed the man's head against the gravel. Hair and bone crunched against the stones. But the man simply roared and swung his arm with such force that he cast Page aside. Even given the man's height and muscular build, his strength was amazing. He had to be on some kind of psychosis-inducing drug.

The flames roared upward, enveloping the rear of the bus. Page squirmed backward to escape them.

Snap, snap, snap.

The heat broke windows. The wails of the people trapped inside became hysterical. Seeing the gunman reach for his rifle, Page came to his feet and charged again. The impact of striking him was so great that it sent both of them farther from the bus.

They hit the gravel and skidded. Landing on top, Page tried to drive a fist into his opponent's larynx, but the man abruptly twisted, and Page connected only with the side of his neck. The man swung his arm again and struck Page's shoulder so hard that he knocked Page off him. The blow jolted Page almost to the point of paralyzing him. Groaning, he stuck out a foot and tripped the man as he ran toward his rifle. The man landed heavily, grunting loudly.

The flames spread along the bus, their heat radiating toward Page's face.

"Open the door! Get off the bus!" he yelled to the people inside.

He grabbed the gunman from behind and clamped his left arm around the man's neck, straining to choke him. Simultaneously he drove his right fist into the man's right kidney, punching him again and again.

The man lurched backward, ramming Page against a car behind him. As he groaned from the impact, the man twisted away from the car and deliberately fell back. Page groaned again when he struck the gravel. He felt crushed by the man's considerable weight landing on him.

He couldn't breathe.

His arm loosened around the man's neck.

In a rush, the man came to his feet, kicked Page in the right side, and lunged again for his rifle. All the while, the flames roared upward from the rear of the bus and spread toward the front. Page felt the heat through his shirt.

Pumped by adrenaline, he forced himself to his feet.

The man picked up the rifle.

Page charged, struck the man from behind, and propelled him into the flames. The fire was so thick that Page couldn't see the rear of the bus, but he heard a thump when the man struck it.

The man's clothes caught fire. His hair blazed.

Turning, he seemed to smile--or maybe it was the effect the flames had on his facial muscles. The rifle fell from his burning hands.

He held out his arms and stepped forward.

Page stumbled away from him.

Ablaze, the man kept lurching toward him, his flaming arms outstretched, his mouth spread in a grotesque smile.

Page jolted back against a car. He squirmed along it, trying to get away from the fiery nightmare that kept stalking toward him. The man's smile wasn't defined any longer as flesh shrank away from his teeth. He was terribly close, and the smell of his burning flesh was sickening.

About to give Page a fiery embrace, he abruptly twisted to the side.

The sound of a shot was almost absorbed by the roar of the flames. A second shot made him stagger. His face tilted skyward, for the first time showing anguish.

A third and fourth shot dropped him to his knees.

A fifth shot blew a hole through his head.

The man dropped face down, embracing the gravel, his broiling flesh spreading across it.

Page staggered away from him, staring toward his left. The shooter was Tori. She held Costigan's pistol with two hands, her arms extended, her wrists and elbows locked the way Page had taught her.

Her face was twisted with fury. She squeezed the trigger again, shooting into the flames that covered the man.

"Bastard!" she screamed. "Bastard!"

The door to the bus banged open. A half-dozen people surged out from the smoke. They sobbed and coughed, running toward the cold darkness and away from the bus, which was little more than a flaming coffin now.

Page hurried around the car and approached Tori from the back.

As heat swept over them, she shot again toward the flames that consumed the man.

"Now you're the one who's going to hell!" she screamed.

"Tori," Page said. He came up next to her, reaching for the gun.

"It's okay now. He can't hurt anybody anymore. Give me the pistol."

She fired again at the burning corpse's back.

"You son of a bitch!"

"He's dead," Page told her. "You don't need the gun anymore."

He put his right hand on the pistol and pressed it down, encouraging her to lower her arms.

"Give it to me."

Gradually the tension in her hands relaxed. Slowly she released the weapon.

Page's cheeks felt raw from the heat. He guided her in a wide arc around the front of the bus, away from the fire. As the air became darker, it cooled his skin.

The people who'd escaped from the bus slumped near the fence, sobbing. Bodies lay everywhere. He counted twenty but knew there were more. A few squirmed in pain. Most had the stillness of death.

"Tori, don't look." He guided her to the Saturn, where he hoped she'd feel sheltered, but the car was locked, and when he felt the front pockets of Tori's jeans, he didn't find the keys. They must be in her purse, he thought.

He led her to the bench on the observation platform. He looked around but couldn't find the purse in the darkness. After sitting her down, he promised, "I'll be right back."

He ran to Costigan. The chief 's cowboy hat lay beside him. The left side of his head was covered with blood. Page touched his wrist and felt a pulse.

"Hang on," he told him.

He found the car keys in Costigan's pants and ran to the cruiser, pressing the unlock button on the key fob. Inside, he grabbed the radio's microphone.

"Officer down! Officer down!"

"Who's this?" a man's angry voice demanded. "How'd you get on this radio?"

"Officer down!" Page had trouble keeping his voice steady enough to identify himself and describe what had happened. "I was with the chief! He's been shot!"

"What?"

"At least twenty other people were hit. At the observation platform outside town. A bus is on fire, and . . ." As he supplied more details, the enormity of what had happened struck him. "The assailant's dead, but we need all the help you can bring."

"If this is a joke--"

"Look at the horizon east of town. You ought to be able to see the glow of the fire."

"Just a . . ." The pause was suddenly broken. "Holy . . . I'll get help as quick as I can."

Page sat numbly in the cruiser and stared toward the devastation that lay beyond the windshield. The light from the flames rippled over the bodies. His side aching, he got out of the car and stepped around pools of blood, approaching the people who'd escaped the burning bus.

"Help's on the way," he promised them.

"Thank you," a woman told him through her tears. "Thank you for saving us."

"I was sure I was going to die," a man said, trembling. ". . . Never been so scared."

"Why did he do it?" someone demanded. "Why?"

Amid the roar of the flames, Page noticed that more survivors were warily emerging from their hiding places. Some had crawled under vehicles. Others had run across the road and concealed themselves in the darkness of a neighboring field.

An elderly man wavered among the corpses. Smoke drifted over him.

"Where's Beth? Where's . . . ?" The old man stopped and groaned.

Grief made him sink to his knees. He cradled the head of one of the bodies.

Heartsick, Page went back to the observation platform.

Tori no longer stared toward the grassland. Instead she bent despairingly forward, her face in her hands.

She shivered.

Page noticed the windbreaker on the bench. He got it and draped it over her shoulders. He finally saw her purse on the floor, where she must have dropped it when the shooting had started. He placed it next to her. Numb, he sat beside her, put an arm around her, and listened to the blare of the approaching sirens.

*

PART TWO

THE DARKLING PLAIN

Chapter 21.

Brent Loft gave his most amused, sympathetic look to the camera, saying, "Near Arroyo Park, a tearful ten-year-old girl waved for a police car to stop and pointed to where her cat had climbed to the top of a high-voltage utility pole. Workers from El Paso Electric arrived with a crane and very carefully rescued the feline, which, as you can see, was more afraid of being rescued than of staying on top of the pole. The thick, insulated gloves of the man on the crane protected him from more than just the electrical lines."